GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (approximately 715%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61760 (715%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21280 (493%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.